


there's a mad man in the gulrubb field

by lindt_barton



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Turnips, furiosa as a metaphor for the healing of the people, i guess..?, max as an elemental of the desert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindt_barton/pseuds/lindt_barton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s a mad man in the gulrubb field!” cried Cheedo, with a grin that’s sayin’ /your Mad Man/.<br/>Some sort of h/c drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's a mad man in the gulrubb field

“There’s a mad man in the gulrubb field!” cried Cheedo, with a grin that’s sayin’ _your Mad Man_ , through Furiosa’s empty window. Furiosa doesn’t remember what she’d been doing. 

They’d found him twitchin’. Eyes everywhere, eyes wide. Eyes not able to see people no more and a shard of _something_ as a knife in his fist. Ready to tear people apart, need be. Lucky for the lot of them, Cheedo saw him and went running. 

Furiosa’d pushed through the crowd. All tryna catch him, none knowin’ how to avoid getting shanked. She told them all to leave him to her, knowin’ they’d all stay thinkin’ there’d be a show as she finished him off. So she told them to leave again, as he was her business and hers alone. 

They shuffled away, all mutters ‘n backward glances. This already the gossip of the day. 

His hands had flown wilder, suddenly no human walls pennin’ him in. 

She stares at him, his eyes that don’t see people. His hand still up, eyes still everywhere, still nowhere. Stares him down. Wide, strong eyes. Waits. Wide, steady eyes. Sees the tide tippin’, the fight fallin’, ‘til he finds her.

Finds need, finds a word, “Water.” Most of the letters are still missing. Stuck in that sandpaper throat, caught on cracked lips. His eyes still flick all over, but at least they briefly land on hers. 

She unhooks the worn tin flask, always full on her belt. Immediately, his eyes are glued, his hand outstretched. A doomed soul called to the rocks. She takes the opportunity to lower his still raised hand. She would take the knife too, but he has already dropped it. 

The moment water spills onto his lips, the world falls away from him. He is a single axis of desire from finger tips, to gaping, gulping mouth, to the knees which buckle beneath him. A worshipper beneath an altar of purest chrome. His hair is long enough to cover his ears, forehead and half of his neck, with no order to be seen in it. It looks half solid with dirt, maybe blood. She’ll check that later. She doesn’t recognise the assortment of green, brown, grey clothes. He has a black rag tied around his neck. 

The final drop runs off his chin. A spring rain that cuts deep river beds into the orange dirt caked on his neck. A canyon wind is born between his lips as a great breath escapes him. He licks his lips. They are water sweetened flesh where before had been only unmalleable stone. 

He rises with a restrained grunt. An old hound. His eyes flick across the greenery in rows around them, and back to her. Another word. A low hum, “Food?”  
Furiosa scans the rows of round leafed, shin height greens in the field around them, “Want a gulrubb?” His blank look puts a mischievous glint in her eye. When she turns away he sees a flash of paled chrome hair from nape to crown. Her hair is long enough now that it sits flat on her head instead of sticking up like it had the last time they’d been together. The war paint is gone. 

He watches her flick along the row of sprouts, his head tilted, until one meets her standard. She grips it at the base and pulls. Rich earth, the like he hasn’t seen in countless years, falls in a shower from a thick, purple tuber that tapers to a few scraggly roots. She holds the… _gulrubb_ beside her head, a wry triumph. He narrows his eyes, squints at the tubour, looks back at her, _You know that is a turnip._ She says, “The Dag names everything she plants, and the kids listen to her.”

She throws it. He’s worn too slow to catch it in his hands, and ends up awkwardly cradling it against his chest with his forearms. He takes it in his hands, bounces it against his palm, considers it. So long without food, despite the nauseating hunger that seems to stretch as far as his fingers, the concept of eating feels abstract. With the ragged nail on his thumb, he scrapes away the muddy surface and reveals the flesh beneath. It is clean, untouched by dirt, like he hasn’t seen for generations. Even with the dirt of the surface scratching against his teeth, he has no memory of anything sweeter. 

His world collapses to bite, chew, swallow, and is filled with a crescendo of slurps, crunches and grunts. Noises, common in this world, that speak of hunger left too long untended. The flesh, the life, pours into him. He only stops when his teeth hit fibrous stem.

He looks up to Furiosa. She says, “We have more,” and turns away, expecting him to follow. He does.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you liked, tell me if the tense change in the middle was jarring. 
> 
> This would have been longer if I wrote fast enough to keep up with my fickle interests, so here are a couple more paragraphs that don't go anywhere at all:
> 
> As they walk, his eyes scan along rows upon rows of green shoots. The colour almost burns his eyes, they are so unused to it. He looks away only when they pass the shell of a scrap car. Three kids had been hiding behind it, obviously watching them. They are all the colours of the earth, not painted the white of bleached bones, which he had become used to. One of them has the top half of their head painted dark with dirt. They scatter, giggling, when he catches their eyes. 
> 
> At the noise, Furiosa turns and watches them. Doesn’t scan for a threat, nor search for a weakness, and he sees that the war that once within her, had been lost in the winds. 
> 
> As they walk further still, houses sprout around them, crowds fill in. Many greet her, a few walk with her for a few paces, fixing business. All look at him, curious, but do not say a word. They’ve already heard the story. From old Suzie who’d heard the noise, from Biralee who’d seen the beast, and from little Daku who’d seen Furiosa tame it.


End file.
